The only good thing, from an Everton point of view, to come out of the shock FA Cup defeat by Reading was that the home fans were still classy enough to applaud deserving opponents off the pitch, despite their own disappointment. Arsenal supporters couldn't manage that even in a Wembley cup final last Sunday. Many made for the exits the instant the final whistle blew on Birmingham's unexpected though not undeserved triumph, and by the time Stephen Carr went up for the Carling Cup he was forced to wave it to just one end of the ground because the other was completely empty.

So fair play to Everton fans. "To get clapped off by the home fans here was a tremendous tribute," Reading's manager, Brian McDermott, said. "They are great people on Merseyside."

The bad news for Everton, and perhaps David Moyes in particular, was that their supporters also booed the home players. As frustrated as everyone else, the Everton manager had little option but to take the latest blow on the chin. "I am not hiding it, we are majorly disappointed," Moyes said. "I know there are situations where we are not good enough to win games, that much is obvious."

Yes, but there are games and games, and when the manager of a side who have just put Chelsea out of the competition for the first time in three years admits the team do not possess enough craft or quality up front to progress against a Championship team at home and in pursuit of the only silverware on offer this season, it sends a powerful signal that something is going to have to change quite soon.

Everton supporters are nothing if not fatalistic. No sooner had Phil Neville's final penalty hit the back of the Stamford Bridge net than the possibility of following a blaze of glory with a damp squib at Goodison Park was being discussed, so going out meekly to supposedly inferior opposition did not necessarily take everyone by surprise. It just seemed to confirm suspicions that the club clock has not just stopped but started to turn backwards.

The particular charge against Moyes this season, one the Reading result would appear to bear out, is that his normally feisty Everton have lost all direction and purpose against ordinary opponents. For a team tipped by some seasoned observers to be challenging for a Champions League place this year, Everton have been remarkably inconsistent, beating Liverpool and Spurs yet losing at home to West Brom and Newcastle.

Results against top teams have been for the most part respectable, yet Everton have spent the season nearer the relegation positions than the European ones because of tame home draws with Wolves, Wigan and West Ham, not to mention the spectacular implosion of Everton 1 West Brom 4 back in November. Those four clubs are propping up the table, and Everton, in addition to failures against Bolton, Blackburn and Stoke, are still waiting to beat any of them.

Consistency is one of the things Moyes brought to the club, in addition to a spiky way of playing that would normally guarantee Everton a fighting chance against all but the most classy of opponents. If Everton can no longer be relied upon to compete to a certain standard, nothing can be taken for granted. As Wolves have demonstrated this season, it is perfectly possible to raise your game and notch some notable victories over the big boys while remaining in imminent danger of relegation.

To say Everton have been a disappointment in the league this season is an understatement, but now the same inability to string a couple of results together has put paid to their hopes of the FA Cup. Maybe they were guilty of looking too far ahead. Having already won at Manchester City in the league this season and having no reason to fear Gérard Houllier's Aston Villa, they might have been thinking of quarter-finals and beyond and Manchester United and Arsenal playing each other. After putting out Chelsea it would be perfectly natural to think that way, but only if you are the sort of team who can be professional and clinical enough to get an obstacle such as Reading out of the way.

Everton plainly are not, and Moyes has admitted as much. Not only were the Championship team deserving winners, it was an Everton player who was embarrassingly late for the game after being held up on the motorway, and with Marouane Fellaini out injured again for the rest of the season, joining Tim Cahill on the sidelines, the manager has lost two of the players who do more than most to carry his combative instincts on to the pitch.

In almost 10 years at the club Moyes has known disappointment and immense frustration before, and bounced back quite brilliantly on countless occasions. There are signs, however, that he is becoming weary and less effective, just like his players.

The old theory that players gradually grow tired over the years of the same instructions from the same manager is undermined by the longevity of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger elsewhere, though United and Arsenal have known success under those managers and have new challenges to meet each season. Plus they have money to spend, if required, to overhaul the team and freshen things up.

Everton have none of those advantages, and are becoming stuck in a rut. They are good enough not to be relegated, but Moyes is a better manager than that and deserves a greater challenge. He did enough in his first five years at the club to be recognised as an outstanding organiser and motivator, but the upward move never came. Partly because he has little European experience, partly because the big jobs usually go to foreigners. Everton are never going to sack Moyes, and nor should they. He has hardly failed, he has just found it difficult in the past few years to repeat the giant strides of his early tenure. Wenger at Arsenal could say the same thing, and Moyes at Everton has been loved and revered just as much.

So what should he do? Resign, just to break the circle? It is not his fault that Everton are not going anywhere, but what else can he alter? What is there left to try?

Some of the fans think the chairman Bill Kenwright ought to resign, but in the absence of a rich and generous benefactor that would be a fairly pointless gesture. Moyes has done superbly well for Everton, he has been the best manager a cash-strapped, diminished club could hope for, yet the club's situation now is drifting back towards the hopelessness and stasis it knew under Walter Smith, the season Preston's bright young boss was brought in to successfully stave off relegation.

That's the reality of the Premier League glass ceiling, the result of perenially having to compete with clubs with infinitely greater financial resources. It is tough for teams in the middle. While Moyes's players may have deserved to be booed off after their Reading defeat, the manager himself is still hugely in credit after the last nine years. He just won't be feeling that way at the moment. He will be at his wits' end, glummer than he has a right to be, wondering how this weird sort of success story can possibly come to a happy conclusion.